CONNECTICUT OPINION; WHEN THE FOURTH OF JULY WAS A (DANGEROUS) BLAST

By HERVIE HAUFLER; Hervie Haufler lives in Wilton.

Published: July 5, 1987

Recalling the frightful statistics of youthful mayhem when observance of the great July holiday was neither safe nor sane, I raised my kids to honor the Fourth from a distance.

As the weekend approached, we scanned the prospects for fireworks displays and made our selection. On the big evening, we packed ourselves into the station wagon, drove to the site, spread our blankets on the ground and lay back as the professionals touched off the giant bombs that filled out ears with martial noise and made the night sky bloom with huge flowers of fire.

But my memory is long enough to embrace a time when observation of the Fourth was not a spectator sport. As a boy, I bought and exploded my own fireworks. Back then the Fourth ranked a near third among holidays: Christmas was creches and toys, Easter was Resurrection and chocolate, and the Fourth was the Revolution marked by personally ignited fire and brimstone.

The Fourth, in those days, wasn't something that could be painlessly slipped by in an hour or two of one summer's night. We were caught up in it for days, weeks, before it arrived. School was hardly out in June before the local stores broke out their stocks of noisemakers and fire makers. From then on we spent every available minute earning pennies and cadging nickels to make a gratifying variety of purchases.

From each nickel's sale of a Liberty magazine I made one and a half cents. Carrying home groceries for an elderly widow honored our Boy Scout pledge of courtesy, but could also help me earn a few pennies. Collecting nickel-deposit milk bottles sometimes yielded a treasure trove. Using my wagon to haul a 50-pound block from the ice house had the potential of being paid as much as a dime.

Then, with my assembled hoard of coins grasped in a damp palm, it was time to stand before all that showy array of pyrotechnics and torture myself with making my choices.

There were pinwheels that used jet propulsion to push them into whirling dances for fire - very showy, but they cost a quarter apiece. There were Chinese crackers whose fuses were intertwined - set off one and the others followed in a long series of crackling bursts. There were Red Devils, which required only a grind of one's heel to set them off into spitting detonations, foil-covered cones like small volcanoes that erupted storms of burning snowflakes, sparklers that would shoot off tiny meteors and whose glowing wires would be used to write designs on the night sky, and gaudy Roman candles and minirockets so expensive that one's budget could stand no more than one or two.

There were small balls of torpedoes that, when deftly rolled beneath the wheels of an oncoming car, would go off with a bang that would make the driver sure he'd had a blowout. And remember to leave a few pennies for slow-burning punk, which served as a lighter.

When the great day arrived, we didn't limit our participation to the night. Big firecrackers, we were sure, were a special case, deserving to be set off in broad daylight so we could see the effects. We'd reach the moment when one of us would decide it was time to blast of his Big Berthas and get it over with. There were nervous consultations about how it should best be done - whether buried in loose dirt up to its fuse to deliver a miniature version of a Mount Pelee explosion or placed under the edge of a tin can to see into how high an arc the can could be hurled. We huddled around the owner and watched breathlessly as he applied his punk to the cordlike fuse. When the sputtering began, we scrambled behind fences or trees that would protect our bodies except for the parts from our noses up.

When night came, my family would load what was left of my cache into the car and drive up to the park that overlooked my hometown. On that night, it seemed, everyone was up there. Wherever you looked there were firecrackers flashing, Roman candles hurling phosphorescent blobs, rockets streaking parabolas of flame and small bombs soaring up to explode into delicate traceries of colored light.

It was a night of firey triumphs and dismal disappointments. Oh, the anguish of realizing that I'd buried the shaft of my one 50 cent rocket too deep into the ground and, instead of its rising in a trail of sparks, it was sitting there fizzing its magic into the grass.

The skyline of our city was lighted not by one great overpowering display but by thousands of small, independent, uncoordinated rites. To my young eyes, no sight was more splendid.

Memory also reminds me how close I came to being a statistic. I had treated myself to some big red four-inch monster crackers. They had been great, exploding with a force to rattle windows. My last cracker I placed under a garbage can lid, expecting to see it fly skyward like a giant tiddlywink. Instead, the cracker's fuse sparked and, seemingly, died. After a cautious interval I went to see what had gone wrong. Gingerly, I picked up the cracker. And at that moment it went off. My fingers were badly burned. I spent days afterward with my hand swathed in bandages. Firey bits of debris burned brown spots on my glasses' lenses. Only my astigmatism saved me from the probability of being partly or wholly blinded.

So yes, I do wholeheartedly support the great change that has left all these dangers to the professionals. Still, when this weekend approaches, I can't check my memory from sneaking back slyly to moments of boyish anticipation and excitement.

And I can't help wishing there was some safe way to make the Fourth not just a remote spectacle but more of a hands-on celebration.